The Pecan Man

Once you tell a lie, you have to keep tellin’ and tellin’ and tellin’ to make it stand.

But, it never dawned on me how wrong it was that I tied her innocence to the fact that she was with me, not who she was, and I am humbled by my ignorance.

The older I get, the less I care what people think of me, but I care a great deal about people knowing my business.

Sometimes the debt you pay ain't exactly the one you owe, but it works out jus' the same anyway. Lord knows I done caused my share of heartache in this life.

Once a lie is told, you have to keep on telling it. You not only have to repeat it time and time again, you have to embellish it, layer upon layer until you don‘t even remember the truth.

I reckon I'm the bes' judge of that. Sometimes the debt you pay ain't exactly the one you owe, but it works out jus' the same anyway. Lord knows I done caused my share of heartache in this life.

It was a vow we made those long years ago. Neither of us spoke of it afterwards, but it hung between us like a spider web, fragile and easy to break, but danged hard to get shed of once the threads took hold.

The people of Mayville didn’t know his name at all, until he was arrested and charged with the murder of a sixteen year old boy named Skipper Kornegay.

Just about the time we finally smelled fall in the air the family grocery store downtown succumbed to the rise of the supermarket. Neither Blanche nor I were able to walk the mile or so it now took to get groceries, so I started taking a cab to the Winn Dixie store. The wide variety of choices was overwhelming at first and it often took over two hours to finish my marketing. Blanche pitched a fit the first time I did that. "Law, Miss Ora, you 'bout

The events of that year were the real driving force behind the mass exodus from the neighborhood. It was the year of the Pecan Man. None of us knew how much impact one skinny old colored man could have in our lives, but we found out soon enough.

When you're as old as I am, it takes a while to make a point. The Pecan Man had a name - Eldred Mims. I called him Eddie. The people of Mayville didn’t know his name at all, until he was arrested and charged with the murder of a sixteen year old boy named Skipper Kornegay.

Doing the right thing is apparently harder than it sounds when politics are involved.

Street. I thought maybe he picked up money

We were quite a team, I thought. One starts a task and the other finishes without a word being spoken.